Little Talks
by Blue Moons and Pink Suns
Summary: AU to S3's This Sorrowful Life. Carol tags along with Daryl to look for Michonne and Merle. One-Shot. Caryl.


**Disclaimer: I do not own or write for TWD or AMC.**

**-/-/-/-**

No one else would go, and she couldn't let him go alone.

She couldn't.

So she went with him, for almost no purpose at all. What good would she do? What could she help?

She didn't know. She really didn't.

But she had brought her rifle, and Daryl had returned her knife. She was indebted to him even more now, and she wasn't going to let him die before she could repay him.

They walked for miles in general silence. He was worried, she could tell. His fingers were white-knuckled around his bow, his thumb bleeding and half-gnawed.

She hated to see him so stressed, so anxious, but a part of her hoped they didn't find them. At least not Merle. Daryl had become a different person after they had lost his brother, and a part of her feared he would revert back to his old self in the presence of such a horrible influence. Just the thought of losing her friend, what he had become, left her fingers twitching to reach out to him, a jumpy anxiety bouncing in her stomach to _do something._

But she didn't. She walked behind him with careful eyes, her heavy rifle slung over her back.

She knew when they found Michonne. She knew that if they found Merle, he wouldn't be alive.

Daryl didn't say anything, but she could tell he was still hopeful. He was always the last to relinquish hope, and when it came to his brother, for the second time, he was more than hopeful. He seemed to be sure, positive, that when they found Merle, he would need help, but he would be alive.

She couldn't bring herself to say any different. She prepared herself for the moment they would turn a corner and see a dead man, face down, a bullet through his head.

They would bring him back. He would probably have had a car, so they would put him in it and take him back to bury them next to the other graves, next to their family members that they had lost.

They heard the car first, and saw the walkers. And when they turned the corner, she saw him.

She breathed deep and reached towards Daryl, pushing him behind her, not expecting this development, stupidly thinking the Governor, his men, were just people, had a speck of humanity left.

They didn't.

"No, no, no, no, no," Daryl whined out, his voice high and breaking.

She turned around. His eyes were streaming, his face red and contorted.

She swallowed her own tears, the screaming pity in her stomach nearly doubling her over. The last time she had seen him cry, he was angry, pissed off, ready to take a man's life in penance for his brother's.

He wasn't angry now.

He brought the back of his hand up to his mouth, eyes squinting, a low whimper escaping his lips.

Merle heard, and stood, his huge form stumbling towards them, tendons and blood dripping from his mouth. There was a gaping wound through his chest. He moaned, eyes locked on the fresh meat before him.

Daryl screamed as if he were being torn apart himself, and backtracked, falling to the grass, arms scrambling, trying to back away in horror.

She turned, tears in her eyes. "Don't look," she instructed him, just as he had those months ago at the barn when her baby had walked out, turned.

Hungry.

He turned his head, openly sobbing, hand over his eyes, and nodded morosely.

She turned, lifted her gun. She aimed. And she didn't miss.

She held him while he cried there on ground, held his head under her neck as he sobbed, moans echoing over the cacophony coming from the car.

When he had quieted, she let him go slowly and walked into the warehouse.

She returned with some painting sheets and fishing line, and laid it over Merle. She took his bayonet off the prosthetic, throwing it behind her, and rolled him onto the sheet. She closed his bloodshot eyes, covered him, tied the blanket closed, and turned.

Daryl had propped himself up, had his face rested in the crook of his arm. Wouldn't look.

"He's covered, Daryl. You can't see him."

He nodded.

She walked over, helped him up. Hugged him close and hard.

They didn't talk on the ride home, didn't talk when they took him out of the trunk, didn't talk when they buried him beside T-Dog, beside Lori's empty grave.

But later that night, all alone in the watchtower, they talked until the sun came up. They talked about Merle and Sophia and T-Dog and Lori. They talked and they cried and they held each other until the demons had retreated from their consciousnesses.

**-/-/-/-**


End file.
